“Cashin walked around the hill, into the wind from the sea. It was cold, late autumn…”

THIS small town crime drama is so ingrained in the Australian outback that it is a bit of a surprise to discover that Peter Temple was born and raised in South Africa.  Oddly, maybe, it reminds me of the underrated Grace Metallious classic Peyton Place. Swap out down town USA for hick Morton Australia, substitute male on female violence for male on male, and the same sleepy town prejudices, bigotry and after hours brawls. It also has some of the drive and grit of a Tim Winton saga.

Joe – Joseph, symbolically at least to his mother – is invalided  out of homicide for reasons to be revealed to the hollow where he went to school, sleepy but still rich enough to figure on the political radar at one extreme and a fermenting ghetto at the other.

• “No it is not a big country town. It’s a shrunken city, shrunk down to shit, all the shit without the benefits.”

Part of the appeal of any detective yarn is we get a passport in to other people’s lives. Being nosey without being intrusive. The good burgher of Morton – half way between Sydney and Melbourne – is respected by all, a philanthropist in his big house, generous with his money, until someone bangs him on the head and he is helicoptered to hospital.

The humour is rough. And abrupt:

• Jesus, she said. What room is this?
• The ballroom. I have the balls in here.

Or

• Not bad, said Cashin. Old Bushie recipe?
• Tomato and onion’s not a recipe

Joe is a loner, except for two stray poodles he has taken in. He lives in the burnt wreck of his father’s farm. Temple cleverly builds his story around him, rather than from or about him.

The narrative is quick fire:

• “Cecily began the search for her cigarettes. Today a quick find, in the handbag. She plucked one, found the Ronson, it fired at first click. A deep draw, a grey expulsion, a bout of coughing.”

Smoking is not the only reminder of the era when this was first published in 2005. There are still prescient mentions of Gaza and Catholic scandals

Sometimes the descriptions are forensic.

• “An anorexic girl with a moustache and a pink-caked s pimple between her eyebrows brought the food. The eggs lay on tissue paper bread, the yolks small and pasta coloured. Narrow pink steaks of meat could be seen in the grey pig fat.”

Other times, just a short hand:

• “Donny Coulter had a thin, sad face, a snub nose, down on his upper lip. It was a child’s face, scarred. He was puffy eyed, nervous, licking his lips.”

Things may not work out too well for young Donny. Another author might have reversed this plot and shoved the finale up front, but that would miss the slow, steady, rich build. The violence and the racism are not really the main fabric here, rather it is the smell of the small of the town, of the little lusts, the scent of bigotry, the deceptions and the back stories which loom over the present.